You know how in big cities there are just so many people walking down any given street at any given time that you’re not likely to wave hello, or even acknowledge the presence of anyone? Many city dwellers have often commented on the strange dichotomy of feeling isolated in a place where they are surrounded by millions of people.

In contrast, you cannot live in a small town without feeling like you know everyone else who lives there. Small-town residents can never afford to be rude to a stranger on the street, because it’s likely that the stranger is now there to stay… their new neighbor.

I know a city with a population well over 700,000 people, yet when I walk into a bar or cafe, everyone turns their head to see if they recognize me, and then when they realize that they don’t, almost immediately inquire about who I am. Many locals refer to it as the biggest small town. Essentially, there is a strong sense of community in this city, that trumps cities three times smaller. That regardless of how many people are actually there, what matters is how people treat each other and how they treat the city itself.

The funny thing, which is probably no coincidence, is that this city is the same city that is constantly ridiculed, sensationalized, and well misunderstood. It stands to reason then that a collective adversity brings people together in defense of what they know their city to be. There is a call to arms… but instead of protecting the physical borders they are defending the sociocultural and emotional ones.

It leads me to wonder what this city will look and feel like in 50 or 100 years. While cities who lack such a tight-knit community, like certain cities with a population well over 4 million, might fall into social disrepair caused by apathy and homogenization, will this city stand as a beacon of hope for community?

Imagine life in a small town: local shops with friendly and social proprietors behind the counter, deeply engaged citizens that work hard to preserve their history, and being able to get to know the farmers who grow the food you eat.

Now imagine life in a big city: cultural diversity, world-class architecture, access to a larger economy, exciting art and nightlife, and a sense of being connected to something bigger.

Now imagine having the best of both worlds?

Because that’s how a city should be.

By Bethany Betzler, bethany@ideaengineeringagency.com

Western society is obsessed with academia and specialist knowledge. We usually assume that a person with a PhD is automatically more intelligent than a person with a mere high school diploma. We overlook right-brain intelligence in favor of expensive degrees. Don’t get me wrong- I have a great amount of respect for those who have dedicated their careers to acquiring specific knowledge in order to better serve that field their knowledge relates to. However, we must begin to re-think the way we judge and value people’s intelligence. Dyslexic and autistic young people are too often marginalized and considered slow when their unique way of seeing the world could be greatly beneficial to the rest of us left-brain dominated folks. There is an excellent scene from the movie Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon’s character walks into a bar and proves his self-taught level of intelligence over that of a Harvard-educated peer.

Thankfully, many of today’s most exciting thinkers on innovation are beginning to praise the effects of ‘outsider’ contributions to knowledge and problem-solving. Charles Landry, author of The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators, says the following about ‘radicals’, which could be interpreted as individuals with outsider knowledge (i.e, no formal education in urban planning, etc.) but who have a strong grasp on the issues at hand for other various reasons:

‘The role of radicals, activists, campaigners and grassroots movements is severely underestimated in launching and building momentum for innovations, especially in less technologically advanced areas. Community leaders and social mobilizers have been at the forefront of urban innovations throughout history, they are closest to the issues as they usually live in neighborhoods with the severest problems. Most mainstream ideas were started by a radical. The policy implication is for the mainstream to look to, listen to, and be sympathetic to the radicals, inside and outside the organization. The historic role of radicals even stretches to the consultative mechanisms now accepted as part of what makes a modern, caring company or public sector organization. The central role of outsider groups or alternative movements has been documented by Art Kleiner in The Age of Heretics (1996.) Even the innovative empowerment structures in corporations had their origins in a body of intellectual work in the post-war period whose roots lay in Western and Eastern spiritual traditions, in new types of social science and humanistic psychology and the counterculture of the 1960′s. Their heretical ideas have gradually moved into the mainstream becoming the operating premises of institutions- commercial and public- worldwide.’

In other words, we innovate when we bring together a mix of minds with different perspectives, histories, realms of knowledge, and persuasions. A great example of this kind of innovation is when progressive medical professionals match their Western-education based knowledge of medicine (left-brain thought) and collaborate with an energy healer who’s developed therapies based on meditation and positive visualization (right-brain thought.) We need to work together, all types of thinkers, doers, formally educated or not- to create healthier companies, cities, and communities.

- By Bethany Betzler, bethany@ideaengineeringagency.com